United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  “Wait, what about the safe zone?” Mark asked, “And wait, Neptune can sustain life?”

  “The Safe Quadrant, is a heavily fortified city, guarding the fastest route to the nearest galaxy from us, it’s really called the…”

  He was interrupted by a Jupitain that was banging on the door.

  The alien sighed with relief, “Don’t worry, that only means dinner.” He took the tray from the Jupitain, and set it on top of the ‘cot,’ “You know, I never got your name by the way,” The alien asked Mark.

  “It’s Mark, yours?” He asked back.

  “Uliski.” He looked at the tray of rotten food under him and said, “Welcome to your new home.”

  “Let me out!” James shouted. He was in the same type of cell as Mark, and his roommate was Lewis, who was still out cold after the door had slammed into him. James shouted at one of the Jupitain guards, “Where are Claire and Imptanius?!”

  It turned its head, the red visor glowing. It just looked at him blankly, and then resumed its post.

  “Ugh, answer me you monster!” James yelled, frantically.

  This time the Jupitain’s visor turned green as if being granted access to something. It turned around towards James and smiled viciously. It grabbed a shock-spear. The two ends weren’t pointed, but they lit up with red electricity. It sparked and whizzed from the tips of the spear, the electric energy hitting the floor. James jerked backward, regretting what he had just said.

  The Jupitain guard pressed a button on the wall, and the door to James’s cell opened, leaving him exposed to the guard’s wrath. He hit James in the stomach and sent him flying backward into the wall of his cell, shocked by the electricity passing through his body.

  The Jupitain attacked again, aiming for James’s head. It missed. James had rolled out of the way and started charging towards the Jupitain. It electrocuted him in the chest until James fell to the floor. He twitched and panted. The Jupitain growled, disappointed that he wasn’t hurt more, and left the cell, closing the door behind it. Lewis woke up, startled to see James on the ground.

  Lewis moaned, “Did I miss anything?” He had a large bruise on the right side of his forehead.

  Lewis, 2027, August 2nd

  Lewis was a natural born comedian. He always saw the funny side in things. It was soon apparent that his comedic self, and witty potential, would turn him into somewhat of a mediocre genius. At least he called himself that. He was smart but thought that the public-school system was stupid, and he didn’t hide that opinion either… so his grades weren’t too good.

  His intellect was better than most, and when someone called him a nerd, he always had a sly comeback. He was most interested in engineering, and he could make a small engine at age thirteen, he thought that there was nothing he couldn’t do, or at least, that’s what he thought.

  When his mother died of Brain Cancer, he turned out relatively okay, but his father was genuinely heartbroken. She was the only woman he would ever love. For a month after Lewis’s father had gotten fired from his old job, he worked at a small run-down casino, as a co-manager to save up enough money for Lewis to go to college. They would soon find out that it wouldn’t be necessary.

  Lewis was flipping through a magazine, looking at articles about the new Mimasu Telescope, which was in the heart of Tokyo, Japan. It had a seeing range that could look high enough to see planets fifty thousand light years away. Unknown to Lewis, however, was that he wasn’t going to see any real images. Any powerful public telescope was censored by the United States’s top secret program, called, Acolyte.

  His father, Michal knocked on his door.

  “Plane’s leaving in an hour, better get going.”

  He heard his slow footsteps walk towards the front door. Lewis jumped off his sloppy, unmade bed, grabbed his suitcase, and followed behind his father. The plane they were taking was part of Hyper-Class Airlines, a new branch of SpaceX that had basically obliterated all the competition when their engineers developed a new Sonic Engine Booster, that sped up the flight time by almost sixty percent, while also being safe, and efficient.

  They were going to arrive in Tokyo in less than six hours. The drive to the airport was quick, his father would go on and on about events at the Casino like bar fights, to cheer him up, but it really was just to help himself. Lewis accepted the past; he knew that he couldn’t change anything about it, so why think about it? That logic didn’t always work though.

  Lewis looked out the window, just trying to keep his mind fixed on Tokyo. When they arrived at the airport, it was raining slightly, and the clouds blocked out the sun as if it was on cue that the Earth was trying to make him miserable. His father pulled out an umbrella and walked out of the parking lot, headed towards a hopefully fun adventure.

  Lewis had been reading about Japan months before the trip. He studied most of the language but downloaded a translator app on his phone just in case. They went through security and waited to board their plane, a Hyper-Class Airlines Jumbo Jet, with two stories and four Sonic Engine Boosters, two on each side. At least four hundred passengers were on board, and every seat had a miniature TV screen that you could plug your phone into.

  Lewis’s father put their carry-ons inside of the storage above them, and sat on the outside of the row, while Lewis took the window seat. He was excited. His dad was reading a Hyper-Airlines magazine, looking at the airline’s articles and trying to look sneaky when peeking at an ad with a supermodel on it.

  The plane screeched off the runway, and flew into the air; Lewis looked at the ground and the tiny dots resembling cars. For over five hours, Lewis watched documentaries, and News broadcasts talking about the Japanese telescope, and how it was a great achievement in human history and ingenuity. Then everything changed.

  His phone buzzed, he had set it to make it remind him if a breaking news story was live… he only liked one station though, the rest he dubbed as fake news. He pressed a button on his TV monitor on the back of his seat, which was connected to Hyper-Airlines Free Wi-Fi, which was also another reason why the branch was so successful. He turned on Bluetooth for his wireless earbuds, and there it was, a chopper circling Tokyo, and five UFOs above the city.

  He gaped slightly, and tapped his dad’s shoulder. The first thing he did was chuckle.

  “Ha, yeah right, don’t worry about it; it’s probably an April fool’s joke from the station.”

  “April fools was three months ago,” Lewis said quietly to himself.

  He looked closer at the video feed; his dad looked too, and he was starting to get less interested in Katie Morgens, the pop singer, which meant he was starting to get concerned.

  The sharp, shark tooth-shaped edges of the ship were starting to crumble the roofs of skyscrapers, and then it fired. Lewis got almost a thousand Social Media alerts in less than ten seconds after that. The target was a giant new Japanese Aircraft carrier, and it had been blown in half, fiery debris falling everywhere.

  Jets sunk to the bottom of the bay, people were yelling and screaming, the ship’s bow had sunk immediately, and took hundreds down with it. The carrier was still visible from the shallowness of the bay, and people were locked in leaking compartments, only having minutes before they drowned.

  Suddenly the pilot announced that they were going to turn around, and head for Australia. They never got to turn after those words. The plane was very low, it was ready to land at the airport, but when it pulled up only two hundred feet, the cabin was blown in half by a blinding red light.

  Lewis was sitting with his father in the tail section, and he blacked out due to the force of gravity pushing them down into the bay. They hit the water, and everything after that was a blur.

  CHAPTER 4

  “What are you doing?” Uliski asked, utterly confused with Mark’s hand gestures.

  “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” Mark replied, “Come on, can’t your sphere thing decipherer this?” He hit his palm three times with his fist and made a paper gesture with his hand. �
��Alright, your move, but do it at the same time as me next round.”

  Uliski looked at Mark’s hand, and said, “So I can choose a rock, or wait what are scissors?”

  Mark was starting to get aggravated, “Just choose something.”

  Uliski made a fist to resemble a rock. Mark cupped over his hand to squish his rock with paper.

  “What, that makes no sense, how could such a thin and flat object, topple the density of solid rock?” He asked in an accusing voice.

  “I don’t really know, but those are the rules,” Mark said. Before Uliski could argue more, a Jupitain guard banged on the door.

  “Follow,” it said in a scratchy voice, like it had somewhere else to be.

  The door opened, and Uliski and Mark followed it out of their cell. They walked behind the pitch black Jupitain who was also letting out other unknown alien prisoners. More guards started to join them, and soon one of them reached James and Lewis’s cell, and let the two of them out. James looked miserable, clenching his stomach tightly. Lewis walked out behind James, and looked calm, strangely.

  “Where do you think they’re taking us?” Mark asked Uliski.

  “I don’t know, but it’s probably just another small task.” Uliski was trying to stay calm, but inside he didn’t know what was happening either, or why it required so many prisoners.

  While they were walking, Mark started asking more questions, “So this Safe Quadrant thing, you didn’t really go into much detail about that.”

  Uliski elbowed his arm, then said, “Don’t talk about it near them; you’ll get hurt.” He gestured at one of the Jupitains.

  “Like I care,” Mark said, trying to act tough.

  “Well you should, because the Demon’s visors blink every time they hear anyone talk about it, and a blinking visor is always bad,” Uliski said.

  “Ok ok… so what about the, Safe Quadrant!?” Mark asked the question loudly on purpose.

  One of the Jupitains turned around, and faced Mark, it stood there blankly, until the red visor flashed black, signaling it not to engage, or at least that’s what Mark thought it meant. It turned back around, leading everyone past cell after cell. Uliski punched Mark in the arm, hard.

  “Ow,” Mark grimaced.

  “Don’t do that again, I’m serious,” Uliski growled.

  The group of prisoners that the Jupitains had collected came to a total of thirty-six, including Uliski, Mark, James, and Lewis. None of them looked like they had anything to do with the United Worlds, which made it odd how they were there.

  They stopped at a huge black doorway, lined with glowing red lights. It opened to reveal what looked like an arena. The visor on one of the Jupitains turned blue, and a human-like voice became audible.

  “Attention grieves, we know that you all are confused, but let me clarify your situation,” said the voice, casually. “You have been selected to fight as entertainment for our weary E-6 Cyrisian-2.7 units, and organic Cyrisian officers. You will battle lifeforms from many different parts of the Galaxy, but be cautious, none of you will come back alive. Remember, your service to Cyrus will be forever appreciated, and honored.” The voice sounded robotic, like it was from an old automated system; it didn’t seem like the blue man at all.

  The visor turned red again, and panic swept through the group. Aliens were shouting in different languages or crying, but the only thing that Mark was thinking about was; what is Cyrus? The Jupitains started shoving everyone through the doorway, leading them into a sort of dugout.

  The compartment/dugout led into the arena, with an audience of two hundred Jupitains, but no organic officers… no living things at all. The guards shoved one alien into the arena and closed the door to the dugout behind him, which was made of thick metal bars so that the rest of the group could watch.

  The alien was light green, with a humanoid figure, Mark couldn’t see him now, but he remembered he had only one eye, the same size as a human, and he was wearing rags like everybody else, but had some kind of ragtag looking military uniform under it, with a patch that had a strange looking alien symbol on it.

  Mark and Uliski watched in horror. Lewis had a look on his face that said; well I saw this coming a mile away. James was just starting to get his bearing back.

  Inside the arena, the alien’s opponent was a muscular humanoid who stood at least nine feet tall, with white skin like Uliski, but his face was disoriented and scarred, with what looked to be three small eyes, a particularly deep scar across his right one. It also had a chipped horn coming out of his head; the other was missing. Mark thought he looked like a giant straight out of Greek mythology.

  Uliski looked horrified. “That’s a Grangorian from the moon of Jun; I thought those were extinct!”

  Mark looked at Uliski like he was from a totally different world… which he was.

  The green alien was armed with a shock-spear that was used by the Jupitains, but it was basically the same as a fork in this situation. The giant monster smirked like he was looking forward to killing innocent people. It slammed its giant right arm into the alien. He flew into the wall with a thud.

  Then the Grangorian moved towards him and grabbed a sleek, blue-electronic flame torch that was hanging from one of the pillars, and stabbed the alien in the chest with the pointed part. The prisoner gasped in pain, and died. A roar of approval came from the savage audience of Jupitains.

  “We’re dead,” Uliski murmured.

  The monster that had slaughtered the poor green alien was roaring and punching his chest like a gorilla. He smiled ferociously at the remaining group. The Jupitain guards dragged away the alien’s corpse and pushed in another alien. He was about to enter the arena, a grimace on his face.

  He was more muscular than the last alien and looked somewhat like a soldier. Before he could enter the arena, Mark, without thinking, charged into the Jupitain guard and punched it in the visor.

  The guard fell to the floor and dropped its shock spear. He picked it up and started to repeatedly jab at the Jupitain’s visor. The energy didn’t do anything, and the Jupitain just laid there awkwardly, Mark’s attacks not having any effect.

  The outraged Jupitains in the crowd started chanting, “Die! Die! Die!”

  The guard shoved Mark into the arena, letting him keep the shock spear. If Mark was scared he definitely didn’t show it, he was too angry with the monstrous ways of the Jupitains to care about his own life. The monster charged, it's one chipped horn headed straight for Mark. He rolled out of the way; making the beast hit the bars of the prisoner’s compartment.

  Cheers came from the group but were drowned out by the Jupitain’s disapproval. Mark’s facial expression said; try me. The monster grimaced, and snorted, then charged for Mark again. This time he electrocuted the monster right in the head, but he was being pushed back, desperately trying to stay on his feet.

  The monster’s brain seemed to of been getting fried, but that didn’t stop the horn of the beast from pushing Mark off his feet. Mark’s back was facing a door that led into a different section of the ship; he had studied the room before he was chosen to fight.

  The creature charged, roaring, drool coming down from his ugly disfigured mouth, and at the last second, Mark jumped away from the impact, sloppily, before the beast could comprehend what had just happened. Its massive body slammed into the door, busting it open, and making everyone in the arena go quiet, as they watched Mark sprint into the hallway.

  “Atta-boy Mark, get outta’ here!” whooped Lewis.

  “He doesn’t stand a chance.” Uliski sighed.

  James didn’t say anything; he just hoped that his friend knew what he was doing.

  “No one ever thought to shield that door?!” One of the Jupitain’s visors had turned blue and was echoing the frustrated voice of the blue man through the entire arena.

  Mark couldn’t even hear himself think, with the loudness of his own breathing, and the sound of Jupitain footsteps echoing through the hall. Oh crap, oh crap, oh cra
p, thought Mark. He ran like his life depended on it, which it did because if he got caught, he was going to die. Then a miracle happened. Mark passed a sign that was written in an unknown language, but he recognized what was inside of the room it was above. Guns, and lots of them.

  He ran into the room, which he now understood was an armory, and closed the door behind him. He heard the frantic footsteps of the Jupitains pass by his hallway; he was safe… for now. The Jupitains could see through walls, so he had a limited amount of time.

  He strolled through the shelves of laser rifles, noticing that the Jupitains had upgraded their tech since the invasion of Earth. They flashed red every few seconds, and when Mark picked one of them up, it was light and easy to aim with. Then he found something he had never seen before — Black hole grenades.

  He heard rumors about them from Kelisian officers, and he knew that if used inside an object in space, the results could be devastating. He had found twelve of the super powerful grenades, and put a harness over his shoulder that he found lying in a pile.

  He wrapped it around his waist and attached every grenade to it. They were just regular black spheres that to activate you needed to press a small red button, and it would take five seconds for it to explode after that, creating a ripple in space for a few seconds, long enough to send any Jupitain into an abyss.

  The harness around his waist had a metallic substance in it, so the grenades stuck to it and were easy to get off. Mark grabbed one of the laser rifles, set it to full power, and ran out of the room. He had absolutely no clue where to go, or what to do; he hadn’t really thought he would make it out of the arena alive... he hadn’t thought about anything at all. Two Jupitains that were on guard duty in the hallway spotted Mark, and one of their visors turned blue, “Kill him you idiots, I don’t need him alive anymore!”

  They started shooting at Mark. Red blasts of light passed him, coming very close to hitting him, and he knew that if one penetrated his body, he would die. He fired back; he was using a burst rifle, firing multiple blasts per second, destroying one of the Jupitain’s visors.